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Saturday, May 16, 2009

International round up

With things going so appalling badly for Labour here in Britain, here's a top ten of successful centre-left parties, to cheer us up a bit. Some are in government and coping with the economic crisis while making their countries fairer and more equal, while others are in opposition and poised to win back power. In a sign of the vitality of social democratic and socialist ideas, these examples are drawn from countries on six different continents with a population of more than 1.5 billion people:1. India (Congress, Manmohan Singh). Where better to start than with the world's largest democracy. India's ruling Congress-led coalition was re-elected today for a second term. Congress politicians described the surge in nationwide support as a vote for the party's pro-poor measures. Analysts also thought the vote for Congress was also a vote for clean politics, with a leader who has a strong reputation as an uncorrupt politician, in a political arena tarnished by serious corruption scandals.

3. South Africa (African National Congress, Jacob Zuma). Despite some disillusionment with the African National Congress and their new leader Jacob Zuma, the ANC won more than 64% for the fourth election in a row in recent elections.

4. Australia (Labour, Kevin Rudd). Elected in 2007, Rudd's Labour Party has maintained its popularity despite the economic crisis, with 47% support in recent opinion polls.

8. Czech Republic (Social Democratic, Jiří Paroubek). Centre-left parties are doing extremely badly in most of Eastern Europe, most notably in Hungary where the governing Social Democrats are more than 50% (!) behind their main challengers. But in the Czech Republic, the Social Democrats have a small lead ahead of elections in October.

10. Bolivia (Evo Morales). Morales has been pushing through radical change on behalf of the disadvantaged majority in Bolivia. His popularity has been increasing in recent months, up to 53% in recent polls.

4 Comments:

All we want now is a Left leaning party, so we can get rid of Brown vote in a real party one which knows that having no legs means you cannot walk no matetr what the hell Purnell says or thinks, sadly I do not see one anywhere.

Being pedantic I wouldn't call Obama a social democrat or a socialist, although hilariously the Republican Party are apparently rebranding their terminology for the Democratic Party from the "Democrat Party" to the "Democrat Socialist Party".